I've got a bunch of compact flash cards that I've used heavily in a professional photo and video capacity.
I'm concerned that one of them is going bad, since I am seeing files (most often video, but occasionally photo) become corrupt on a hard to predict basis. I am absolutely sure this is not related to unmounting the card before removing it - the corruption is visible directly after properly removing the card from the camera.
The problem is, I don't know which card is problematic, and the issue seems to be intermittent, so I can't just shoot them full and look for a bad file (and corruption isn't always apparent even then - if the bad bit(s) are within the data portion of a file, it might not be obvious). The problem is rare enough that I can't reliably reproduce it (except when there's a client with a job with files that absolutely, positively cannot be lost - then it's sure to strike).
I could RMA them all under warranty (they're all Sandisk with lifetime warranty), but I'd prefer not to (how do I justify sending in a batch of 5 cards? what do I use during the month that they're gone?).
I'm looking for a tool that will fix them. Specifically, I need something that will do a write/read/write/read cycle for the whole card, and ideally do a full format to remove any bad bits, as well as letting me know the status (is one card particularly bad? are all the others perfectly fine? what level of errors am I seeing on a general basis?).
I'm aware of the badblocks tool, but was hoping to find something tailored more towards CF (and which would hopefully let me map the bad areas out of use, if it's only a few bits). I would prefer a non-windows tool if possible.
Has anyone else solved this problem without simply blindly replacing your devices? Some of the suspect cards are pretty new.
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